Transition Town Tooting

Tag: Community

  • New series of free Carbon Conversations workshops starts April 20th

    All welcome to join our Tenth Series of free local Carbon Conversations!
    Do you want to make some changes to reduce your carbon footprint, save energy and save on your bills, but you’re not sure how or where to start?

    Join a group of local residents in a series of 6 meetings to explore how small changes can make a big difference.
    You’ll assess your own carbon footprint, then together we’ll look at home energy, transport and travel, food, consumption and waste to help you make changes that fit your situation. We’ll help you make an action plan of practical steps to take. The workshops are free.

    When?

    • Sessions will take place on Thursdays between 20th April – 25th May 2017
    • Specific dates are 20th April, 27th April, 4th May, 11 May, 18 May, 25th May
    • they will run from 7:00 – 9:00pm

    Where?

    • At 96 Besley St, SW16 6BD

    What do we do in the sessions?

    For a start, they are enjoyable!
    We discuss what’s important to us about ‘low carbon living’ – our values as well as technicalities. We’re meeting in the home of one of the facilitators, so it’s a friendly atmosphere and you can bring cake or samosas…!

    We play some creative and instructive games, which lead to more discussion and planning. This one is about making travel choices.

    We look at technical information, too. 
    In this example we’re exploring where heat loss occurs in a normal house.

    For all the info on the workshops, download the series flyer

    Please email Ben to join in, express an interest, or ask any questions. 

    We ask for a voluntary contribution of £16.00 per participant to cover the direct cost of “In Time for Tomorrow?” the excellent Carbon Conversations handbook published by The Surefoot Effect.

    To read personal blog posts by participants in an earlier series of meetings, click here and scroll down all six (they are in reverse order as we posted them live after each session).

    All welcome – you do not have to be an expert!

  • Gardens of Refuge project – February 2017 monthly update as we start with a Family Activity Day

    After the long haul of communicating near and far for voting in the Aviva Community Fund last year, winning funding in January, and getting on with the planning for 2017…we’ve begun the project!

    Our first session with the CARAS refugee and asylum-seekers has been a Family Activity Day on Valentine’s Day..
    It was a familiar mother-and-children event like many repeated all across Britain when it’s half term, and that everyday normalness was exactly the point: creating a safe and friendly space for some fun and practical family time together as a community.
    That’s the purpose of Gardens of Refuge: to create with asylum-seekers and refugees a therapeutic sense of wellbeing and feeling at home, plus growing activities and meeting members of the wider local community.

    Run by CARAS staff and volunteers, plus more from TTT, by 11:30 the church hall at All Saints Tooting was transformed with friendly faces and drop-in games and toys for all ages.

    Egle from CARAS ran a 90-minute programme while lunch was being prepared:

    • In a circle of chairs: welcome, introductions & ground rules for inclusion and safety.
    • In a big burst of energy – playing ‘fruit salad’ to get us all interacting, adults and children alike.
    • At 3 tables: looking at images from the Tooting Community Garden and saying which kind of activities individuals would like to try out this year- gardening, picnicking & cooking on a fire; garden crafts; and enjoying nature. Everyone had 5 votes to distribute using sticky stars…results to be shared.
    • Continuing at the tables to decorate flower pots using stickers, feathers and pipe cleaners.
    Carefully writing a plant label
    • Transplanting growing pots of supermarket herbs (donated by Waitrose Balham). Each pot was divided into 5 or 6 smaller pots, so the roots of basil, parsley, coriander, and greek basil have room to grow on windowsills back at home, and so they could all be shared out between 45 people.  
    • Meanwhile lunch was being cooked by Rama, one of the Chickpea Sisters, plus Georgie and Sara from Abel & Cole (who donated fresh salad).
    • To really get an appetite, we played another active circle game: ‘change places if you are wearing stripes…’
    • Then everyone sat down together to enjoy a hot meal.
    • Departure at 2:45 was a balancing act as there were a lot of plants to carry home – some families had three buses to catch – and another time we’ll bring some extra paper bags.

      Thanks to the CARAS volunteers: Rama, Vicky, Ruby, Susan, Nadia.
      And to the TTT volunteers: Resina and her children, Rose, Georgie, Sara, Chuck and Chris from the Royal Horticultural Society. Chris helped us through 2015 and 2016 with ‘Rooting in Tooting’ our first project with CARAS, and is continuing as a mentor in 2017.

      We’re making plans for Gardens of Refuge activities both with the CARAS Women’s Group and the Youth Club. Yesterday we met the Club’s Youth Council to see how they can be involved in guiding the project. The Council is great – 8 young people from 3 countries who are gaining experience of leadership, communication and self-confidence. More on that group later.

      PS – CARAS and TTT both share other updates on our respective facebook pages and on twitter – do follow if you want to be closer to the action! And, do get in contact by email if you want to offer volunteering time or resources – or ideas – to the whole project; we’d love to hear from you.

      In the kitchen
      Our motorscootering mentor

    • Tooting Green Drinks! Roll up! Roll Up!

      Lovely Green Drinks in Tooting last night at The Selkirk, thanks for hosting! 
      We got to know the London National Park City initiative better and asked how we would raise London’s green cover from 48% (current) to 51%???? Our answer is…, Parklets! Green up the base of trees, hand over 1 car parking space to green infrastructure! Guerrilla Garden where you can! Turn the small spaces green, lobby the council to use http://www.frontyardcompany.co.uk/products/plantlock.html…
      So… where would YOU create a Parklet?
      We launched Green Book Club! Whoop! Want to join in? We have 2 articles to read which will be part of the discussion at the next Tooting Green Drinks: 
      • Is talk about it the most important thing we can do about climate change?

      https://thinkprogress.org/end-climate-silence-cbe439a31a8e…

      And…
      • After plastic bag tax what should we tax next?

      https://www.theguardian.com/…/six-billion-plastic-bags-cant…

      So… How could Green Book Club work best for you?? Online discussion? Articles? Youtube vids and TEDtalks? Books?
      AND… we talked about a programme of short, informal talks in the new year – watch this space for announcements on that.
      So… who would you like to come to Tooting Green Drinks to give short talks? What themes could we cover?
      AND!!!! We talked up Dipa’s secret, tasty idea… but you really will have to wait to hear more about that one… yum!
      Green Drinks is an International idea to create informal spaces for discussion and getting to know like minded people in your area. www.greendrinks.org
      We host a Tooting Green Drinks on the third Wednesday of every month at The Selkirk Pub, 60 Selkirk Street, SW17 0ES between 7.30pm and 9.30pm

    • Bringing local cultures and faiths together with outdoor learning in Tooting Community Garden

      We’re proud to be helping with a new outdoor learning project in the Community Garden with Gatton Primary School and the Mosaic Jewish Primary School

      Our Community Garden-based project with Gatton School has run for nearly three years. Gatton is a Muslim primary near Tooting Broadway – click here for lots of our earlier reports.
       
      The Head at Gatton Scool, Rifat Batool, has always been keen to extend the project to capitalise on ‘Garden’ learning opportunities for building community links plus vivid SMSC education. 
       
      SMSC is Social, Moral, Spiritual and Cultural development, which is linked strongly to schools’ citizenship curriculum content.
       
       
       
       
       
       
       

      Rifat Batool has met an enthusiastic ally in Kate Baum, Head of the Mosaic Jewish Primary School. 
       
       
       
       
      This is a first exciting step in bringing together two Wandsworth borough faith communities in a new way, and facilitating a new chapter of shared outdoor learning. Both schools are Ofsted ‘Outstanding’, and this creative experiment is an example to all.
       
      After planning in the autumn, last week on a sunny day in Tooting a Year 1 group from Gatton were joined by children from the Mosaic Jewish School. The photos tell the story:
       
      Examining pictures of the diverse school activities in the Garden since March 2013.
       
       
       
       
       
       
      Sorting garlic bulbs and separating the individual cloves. 
      Which way up to plant them?


       
       
       

      Measuring the plot and cutting string to mark the row.
       

       
       
       

      Planting the garlic cloves.
      Later in the summer we’ll save some to cook dishes at both schools for the Tooting Foodival in September.
       Close encounters.
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
      The Mosaic Jewish School is starting a school garden at their new location in Roehampton. TTT and Gatton School’s facilitation experience – including growing and nature, awareness and teamworking games, building the rainwater harvesting classroom, the insect hotel and the bottle greenhouse – gave the visitors energy and plenty of ideas to add to their own garden and learning plans.

      Children from both schools will continue be involved in joint plans. We can’t wait to see what develops, and we’ll share news on this blog.
       
      Please get in touch with us at TTT if you would like to know more, or contribute to this project.
       
       

    • Rooting in Tooting update: TTT’s project with local refugees and asylum-seekers

      We’d like to update you on the Rooting in Tooting project: TTT’s joint project with the Tooting charity CARAS (Community Action for Refugees and Asylum-Seekers).

      In our past blog posts (view them here) we’ve outlined that we have a year of diverse activities planned with CARAS.

      Participant groups include the CARAS Youth Club and After-School Club, with families and the Women’s Group still to come.

      The project purpose?
      Threefold – to help develop teamworking and relationships while enjoying new activities, to help develop language and communication skills, and to help participants feel that they are joining in with the local community.
      We’re so proud that CARAS won a Team Community Hero award at the Balham and Tooting Community Association annual celebration of local contributions on December 10th.

      Working with the Youth Club
      This is the group with whom we did the pilot project in spring – and it’s typical of working in the refugee setting that the individuals and participant numbers have been changing all the time.

      In one session we were making models of the rain-fed growing planters that we hope to build for real outdoors – a fun and focused session with a dozen young people.

      In another session two dozen young people carved pumpkins, and in another we did more screenprinting using local photos of Tooting scenes. That day one or two lads were on still in their first few days in England…others translated and helped them join in.

      What else?
      We’ve embarked on measuring and preparing timber for some of the outdoor planter construction projects that will turn into flourishing gardens in the spring.

      In December we did a mighty evening session printing 70 cloth bags with nearly 30 young people and volunters, again using local leaves as stencils.  These bags went home as presents over the holiday season, and many others were exchanged for a donation to CARAS.

      The Youth Club designed and printed many different bags!

      Working with the After-School Clubs
      In November and December we joined the clubs, in four age groups from 4 to 11 yrs old. We designed and screenprinted cloth bags with each child, using local leaves as the stencils (..’rooting in Tooting’..!)

      The children were great – and hats off to their energy to join in until 7:30 on mostly wet Monday evenings after full days at school.

      What’s next?
      We continue with the plans and preparation for building flower and vegetable beds, and we’re developing a new strand: designing and making a mural for the site. We have the Women’s Group and family groups to meet. We’ll be planting, growing and harvesting with the 2016 Tooting Foodival in mind.
      The reality is that our project approach has to be very flexible and responsive…we’re learning about the best approaches, all the time.
      In parallel the participants have other activities – for example the Youth Club have support for their college studies and they cook and enjoy meals together. They are taking part in games and training to explore stress, sleeping well, and keeping fit – all those as part of CARAS’ own Happy Future Project.

      Who is supporting Rooting in Tooting?
      People like you! We’re all keen to learn and contribute to alleviating a global challenge that we can work with on our doorstep – thanks so much to all who have volunteered so far.
      In the spirit of flexibility and responding to change, we’re a group of a dozen – some of us do a lot of other things with TTT, some join just this project. We’re never all there at once; some do more time and some do less and we have a mix of skills.
      This has worked out well so far – and if you are reading this and feel you would like to contribute, please get in touch with Charles or Jenny by email at transitiontowntooting@gmail.com

      We’re very grateful for funding and materials from the Royal Horticultural Society’s ‘Greening Grey Britain’ campaign and from the Sir Walter St John Educational Charity.
      Further support is welcome!
      Thanks to all – Charles

    • BATCA Community Heroes

      BATCA Hero Hilary

      It was a good night for TTT and our partners at last night’s BATCA (Balham & Tooting Community Association) Community Heroes Awards.  Our Rooting in Tooting colleagues at CARAS (Community Action for Refugees & Asylum Seekers), won a Team Award, while Hilary Jennings ex-co-chair and key player in TTT since 2008 was a highly commended hero(ine).

      Eleanor Brown, CARAS Youth Services Co-ordinator, with Hafsa and Waseem
      We were happy that our nomination for the ever helpful Ilesh Patel at Miss U Stationers also resulted in a highly commended award.  

      Hilary, delighted (and somewhat surprised!) with her award, reported that “it was a great evening with a real sense of warmth and pride in how this area is a place of community and diversity. A few people mentioned it being an example of how diverse community can live well together.”

      All the Community Award winners are listed in the BATCA press release – click here to read it.


      Email us if you’d like to find out more about our Rooting in Tooting project and check out the newly launched CARAS website!  And don’t forget tomorrow’s Reduce Reuse Resparkle at Tooting Library!


    • TTT’s experience of the Climate march weekend in London and Paris – a sense of community

      Here‘s our second blog post in response to the Climate march weekend, COP21 and Transition’s contribution

      Some ‘community-level’ responses

      London
      We marched with the Transition bloc. Inherently local, it is affirming to feel part of a wider community form time to time. Sunday gave space for us all to talk to each other in a different context compared with many other occasions. This wasn’t about delivering a project, although ultimately it is, but did give space for strengthening bonds that will bear fruit in the future.

      The Transition gang, including friends from Lewes, Crystal Palace and Kingston
      Transition Town Huddle by Deborah Mason

      Paris

      Transition France and Transition groups in Paris co-hosted a free workshop day on Saturday 28th. 
      Here, we met in the huge (and unheated….) ‘La Générale’ space for an afternoon of sharing experience, eating and drinking, and then an evening conference.
       

      Charles: “For 13 hours I was immersed in a sharing community coming together with powerful intentions. The community included the everyday diversity of Paris with its mix of north african and mediterranean faces….different from the diversity we recognise at Tooting Broadway. It was affirming to feel that I could simply approach anyone and talk about shared ideas, ask for support or get some feedback.

      I hosted a workshop about TTT’s ‘Rooting in Tooting‘ project with CARAS, the Tooting charity working with asylum-seekers and refugees – aimed at valuing and including those people in our community. 
      (Notice our coats and scarves!)

      On the one hand not many participants had experience of working with the refugee community; on the other hand they offered many good reasons ‘why’ this project purpose is valuable. A strong message was ‘do this work because we are in our community together’. Yes we are experimenting with this project; it was great the group said it was inspiring and motivational to hear about.”

      The main event in the day was launching 21 Stories of Transition, the new book which illustrates 21 examples (and a few more) of sustainability actions being taken now by communities around the world…people who are not waiting for COP21 to agree. 

      Rob Hopkins, co-founder of the Transition Town approach, led the session along with others who had conceived the projects described.

       
      Buy the book for Christmas! (Details here, it’s available in both English and French). It’s a thrilling insight into the wider community of transition groups and their creativity and hard work.

      I won’t include any spoilers, but do look out for M. Mensch, Mayor of Ungersheim in Alsace, who has helped to lead (probably 21!) sustainability projects locally.  
      He showed me their wonderful town community currency: enlarge the photo…yes it called ‘the radish‘. 

      What would we call a Tooting community currency?

      Do come along to any of our TTT meetings and events if you would like to explore any of this together in more depth. Or please email us, comment on facebook or tweet.

    • People’s March for Climate – This Sunday 29th November!

      TTT will be joining the Transition Bloc at the march, join us :
      11am at the entrance to Tooting Bec Underground Station on Sunday 29th November.

      More information from organisers, including a route map is on the Campaign against Climate Change page here

      This weekend marks the beginning of the 2 week International Climate Conference in Paris called COP21. As we all think about recent events in Paris and wish for peaceful resolution to conflicts the world over, the City hosts the World’s major leaders with hope to gain Global agreement to cut carbon emissions and prevent run away climate change.

      Our very own Jeni Walker at a similar march earlier this year

      This is the largest scale of negotiation on Climate Change mitigation and, if successful, has the highest possible positive impact for the future of us humans on this Planet we call home. However, politics is a tricky business with competing motivations and historical contexts, not to mention very well funded lobbying from those businesses that don’t want limits on carbon emissions.

      We must let those politicians know that we, the people, care. 
      Care that they go to the table with open minds, care they think about the long term, not the few years to the next General Election, care that they listen to the scientific evidence alongside the human suffering that comes from ever more frequent extreme weather events.

      You can read about our experience at the march earlier this year here

      And think about the reasons why you might want to march here

      Hope to see you there, Richard and TTT gang.

    • Community Energy in London – Question Time

      Tooting’s own Furzedown Low Carbon Zone (FLCZ) is joining Community Renewable Energy Wandsworth (CREW) and Repowering London to host the city’s first gathering of all local community energy groups:

      Community Energy in London – Question Time
      Free Entry!

      City Hall, The Queen’s Walk, London SE1 2AA, United Kingdom
      6pm to 9pm on Thursday 12th November 2015

      Please confirm your place as we are filling up. Email us at: communityenergyinlondon@gmail.com



      We have contacted over 30 community energy groups in London and are looking forward to bringing as many as possible under one roof at the same time. A solar roof? Yes please.

       
      This is a great opportunity to meet London’s local energy groups, hear about their good work and the challenges they face, and put community energy on the agenda. During the evening, London’s community energy groups will have the chance to say a few words about their group, their achievements and plans for the future. 

      We will be discussing how we can continue our work with the planned cuts to support for renewable energy. We will also have a Question Time with London’s Community Energy groups, practitioners, policy makers and other experts. 



       
      Click on this link to Community Energy Fortnight to see more about the event and the agenda.

      Let everyone know
      @LDNnrg
      #LdnCommEnergy

      Find out more about us
      ukcec.org/community-energy-london-question-time
      http://www.crew-coop.london/faq.html
      flcz.org
      repowering.org.uk
        
            

    • From the outside looking in

      Mena participating in the garden

      Earlier in the year, we had a visit by an MSc student from Edinburgh called Mena Grossmann. Mena, as she describes below, used Transition Town Tooting as a case study to explore diversity within the Transition Town Movement for her MSc research project.

      For us and the Transition Movement as a whole, engagement with academic research has to be 2-way, with both parties benefitting. We hope Mena’s research will give us real insight into who we are reaching through our work in Tooting.

      Mena will be publishing her dissertation after it has been marked, we can’t wait! And will share it when we can.

      If your Transition Initiative is interested in engaging with academic research, The Transition Network do have suggested guidelines to help negotiate the first steps of partnership between a Transition Town and a Researcher, these can be found here. There is also the Transition Research Network who focus on this area and provide a forum to link a researcher with an Initiative. However, we sort of made it up as we went along…

      Over to Mena…

      “Somebody told me that Tooting was like an onion, because it has many layers. During my 2-week stay in Tooting, undertaking interviews and participating in TTT’s activities as part of my MSc dissertation on diversity and participation in the Transition Movement, I was able to have the incredible opportunity of unpeeling some of those layers.

      Coming to TTT, and Tooting in general, as a complete stranger, my first days felt like when you’re cutting an onion; eyes watering furiously and impaired vision. However, after a few fascinating days visiting the community garden, going along to a neighbourhood planning meeting and undertaking a couple of interviews, a map began to develop bit by bit in my mind as I started to develop an understanding of the functioning of TTT, of the multitude of community groups working in the area and of the social networks and connections that link them.

      Of the many wonderful impression I take with me of TTT and Tooting a few have particularly stuck in my mind. One is the massive dedication and motivation of the TTT core group. Incredible amounts of time go into organising events, maintaining, developing and improving longer term projects, as well as building working relations and friendships with other actors in the Tooting community. And each is done with a sense of joy and passion. TTT offers an incredibly wide range of activities from community gardening to restart workshops (to repair broken gadgets), thus appealing to people with different interests. It also collaborates with a large number of local restaurants, charities, politicians and schools through events and projects, thus embedding itself in the community and playing a part in strengthening the sense of community in Tooting.

      This leads me to my next impression, which is the incredible generosity and willingness of the people of Tooting to be of assistance and to openly share stories with a stranger. I experienced this first hand when, on one of my first days, I went to a restaurant called Al Mirage to ask the owners about their collaboration with TTT during the annual Foodival. Without quite realising what was happening, I was promptly ushered to a table and invited to have lunch free of charge with the owner and his son whilst talking about TTT, the restaurant and life in general. For me, this one event characterises my entire research trip to Tooting. The openness of people outside of TTT to tell me about their experiences of collaborating with them is certainly a testimonial to the favourable reputation that TTT enjoys among the wider community.

      On this note I would like to thank all my interviewees within and outside of TTT, to Richard as my main point of contact in TTT and who worked tirelessly to organise interviews, to all in TTT for making me feel welcome and to Al Mirage for setting the tone of my visit.”